Archive for January, 2010

I am a huge copier of restaurants. Usually I do caviar with blinis and make the blinis to order, but this is not a relaxing, leisurely meal for me and not exactly appropriate for 2 people. So I “stole” from Etoile, Domaine Chandon’s fine dining restaurant in Yountville.

Caviar with all the accompaniments:

Etoile had capers and chives as separate accompaniments that I eliminated. But I did do chopped shallots (much better than onions), chopped egg yolks, chopped egg whites, creme fraiche with snipped chives (the chives really added a lot to the creme fraiche) and not pictured toast points. A great dinner and if you have extra accompaniments leftover, a terrific egg salad.

I thought I had come up with a clever idea. Have an early dinner at Mozza and then order 3 pizzas to go for Sunday football watching game day. I had planned on ordering one dish at a time so this wouldn’t be an in and out one hour meal. Our server convinced me to order everything, including take-out, at the same time, assuring me that he would slowly pace the meal. His idea of pacing and mine are very different. My husband described this meal as “And they are off – you have to make the finish line in 62 minutes.” If the food had been good, I might have handled it better. This has to rank as the one of the worst meals ever. At least 3 of the dishes will make the worst dishes of 2010 – quite an accomplishment.

White wine off their list

Beer for my husband off their list

Chicken livers, capers, parsley and guanciale bruschette – excellent – I ended up giving my half to my husband because I didn’t want to fill up. What a mistake as this was the best dish of the night.

Within five minutes, the next course was served – pacing not even close.

Arancine alla bolognese – tiny balls of nothing, My husband ate half of one ball and I took a bite of the other half of the ball. To the restaurant’s credit they took this off the bill. We would not be so lucky as the meal progressed.

Now this is Arancine done right at Drago.

Fried Squash blossoms with ricotta – our server said this was a favorite antipasti at Mozza. Why? Tiny fried blossoms with a teaspoon of ricotta stuffed inside is not a wonderful stuffed squash blossom. We each ate a half of a blossom. Full charge.

A barely stuffed squash blossom

Notice the difference between the blossom from Mozza and the perfectly plump blossom from Vin Bar.

To replace the arancine, I ordered the bone marrow al forno. I was looking forward to lovely roasted bone marrow like at Church and State and Comme Ca. No such luck.

The first picture looks wondrous and I was expecting wondrous bone marrow.

This is what we got – a lump of fat. We each had 1/4 of a teaspoon. Full Charge.

Comme Ca’s Bone Marrow

Church and State’s Bone Marrow

Being from Boston, I love Ipswich clams so of course I ordered the Ipswich clam pizza. Someone in the kitchen is in love with red pepper because that is all you tasted. The clams were buried in “heat” and basically the pie was inedible – one bite only. Full charge.

Egg, bacon, Yukon gold potatoes and Bermuda onions – this was decent and at least edible.

We canceled our take-out order which made the maitre d’ or GM furious. We had planned on ordering dessert and coffee while the take-out was being made so we can’t be accused of leaving them with already made pizzas, unless they decided to make them ahead of time. We paid the bill and after 62 minutes, we were in the car driving home hungry, weary, and poorer. In retrospect, if we had ordered one dish at a time, we would have left after the arancine and gone to Craftbar, Bazzar or Spago. Anything would have better than this disaster.

We have been very lucky as the list of worst dishes is not that long. To be listed as the worst, the dish had to be executed poorly. This was not a matter of personal preference, but rather a very, badly prepared dish.

Sonny Mcleans – Santa Monica

Fried Clams – these don’t look horrible but take a look up close

This was all breading – the clam is on the far right – smaller than one joint of your little finger

Real Fried Clams with the bellies – Neptune’s Oyster – Boston

The Lobster – Santa Monica

Lobster Roll – Where oh where is the lobster? This should have been called a Mayo Roll.

A Real Lobster Roll – Neptune’s Oyster – Boston

Santa Monica Seafood

New England Clam Chowder – absolutely horrid and inedible – tasted like tin. This should never have been served and if a cook tasted it, I have questions about the tasting ability of the cook. I was going to buy a quart to bring home – I wouldn’t have bought one teaspoonful. My husband complained and they did take this off the bill.

Craft Bar – Century City

Calamari and White Anchovy – the white anchovy was a tapenade and basically added little or no flavor. The calamari was tough, chewy and basically inedible.

La Cachette – Santa Monica

Lightly creamed lobster and blue crab bisque – completely tasteless – one taste only. To the restaurant’s credit, this was taken off the bill.

Ariadne- Boston

Tuna Sashimi with avocado, passion fruit, peanuts, miso & pea sprouts

This was an $18 slightly larger course of 5 small slices of tuna that you needed a magnifying glass to find. It was topped with a huge “salad” of grated daikon, carrots and other assorted “stuff.” I kept thinking there must be more tuna under all the stuff on top. No such luck. Why the peanuts is a mystery to me. I would say that the food cost for this dish was approximately 10% if that. Absolutely dreadful.

Bistro Jeanty – Yountville

Deep-fried smelts with spicy aioli – For some reason the coating kept falling off – not even close to the wonderful smelts they used to do

Smelts at Jeanty done right.

Enoteca Drago – Beverly Hills

Breakfast Pizza – Onion, Mushrooms, Bacon & Eggs – I am imagining a runny yolk. Do you see that pitiful hard one yolk? Where oh where are the caramelized onions? To the restaurant’s credit, they remade the pizza.

Fried Oyster and Bacon Brochette with Tabasco Aioli – I was imagining lovely fried oysters that would take me back to New Orleans. No such luck. This version was a lump of 3 oysters on a skewer that tasted as bad as it looked; heavy breaded greasy mushy oysters, bordering on “bad” oysters with barely cooked bacon – a mess.

It is with great sadness that I have to report that Bazaar will no longer be serving brunch on Saturday and Sunday after Feb 13. I love Bazaar’s brunch – it is not a scene and the food is delicious.

The menu – very extensive, even at brunch. Unfortunately the egg dishes are not on the dinner menu.

The bar area – also prep is done in this area as well.

Nicole – our cute server who also has a French Bull dog, Camilla, who seems to be as spoiled as our 3 dogs.

We tend to order the same things again and again so many of the descriptions are repeats as the dishes themselves.

Bloody Mary – “Freshly-made tomato juice, celery-wasabi foam” – The base is a mix of tomato juice, vodka, Worcestershire, lime juice, salt and pepper. It is topped with celery-wasabi foam that is created by loading wasabi-infused lime juice and celery puree into a CO2 canister. Nicole suggested that we choose Ketel One Vodka as it is the purest. We did as we were told.

Bagel and Lox Cone” – a cone made out of brik filled with salmon eggs, crème fraîche and topped with a sprig of dill – a one bite of deliciousness.

Fresh Kumamoto oysters, lemon, black pepper – presented in a tin. The tin is just for show as the oysters were freshly shucked.

BYO Chamapgne

Jamon Iberico de bellota Fermin – acorn-fed, free-range Iberico ham – Absolutely had to have this again and just as delicious as the first time. The jamon is served with Catalan style toasted bread with tomato; eat the jamon and bread with tomato separately. The bread with tomato was perfect as well as the jamon.

12 Tiny Eggs Sunny side up – Huevos a la Cubana “Andy Garcia” – a crispy rice cake was topped with 12 fried quail eggs, crispy shavings of Jamon Serrano, dabs of an intense, spicy tomato puree, crispy bacon and topped with some diced chives. I love this dish, I love this dish, I love this dish.

Croquetas de pollo- chicken and bechamel fritters – perfect

Inside of the croquetas.

BYO White Wine

Chef Yancy Windsperger – this goes into the record books as the world of wine and food is a very small one. Yancy worked at Cotes Basque in New York, then Bayona in New Orleans, a restaurant in Miami and finally found his way to Los Angeles. Well, Ron and Regina Keever co-owners of Bayona witth Susan Spicer are two of our closest friends!

Bar Bouchon is now open continuously from lunchtime through dinner. No reservations, but there is table dining outside and bar seating inside. On a lovely, warm afternoon in Los Angeles, there is no better place to lunch. The tables overlook a “park” (my husband called it the most expensive park, recently created) with the Montage Hotel on one side and Bouchon on the other. Bar Bouchon has a limited menu, but there are still plenty of options.

The “park”

First wine bought from their list

Bagaduce Oysters from Maine – at Bouchon upstairs they have an assortment of different kinds of oysters. Bar Bouchon features just one kind, but it changes daily.

It was very difficult to just limit myself to a couple of dishes so I ended up with much more than I intended. There is an over-representation of dishes from the French Laundry, Manresa and Urasawa. These are my favorite restaurants in the States. As we didn’t go to France this year, there are no favorite dishes listed from there. We also cut back on our travels so all restaurant dishes are from Northern and Southern California.